Falldog

NaNoWriMo starts tomorrow. I have a brave band of half a dozen fellow loonies – though work pressures may force Jon to pull out before we’ve even begun! – and a group NaNo session lined up for Sunday, so I’m going into this prepared. Well, as vaguely prepared as I imagine it is wise to be in this situation. But… well, eep. Wish me luck.

EDIT: I’ve added a progress meter to the menus on the left (sorry it’s a bit crammed in, but I’m still not an expert at this business), so you can all watch me fail in technological splendour.

… then Universal must be the Devil! How many more of those curvy-cornered albums am I going to buy this autumn? I have long suspected that UMG owns most of the world’s richest seams of pop, and it seems like I’m right.

On the subject of this, a few words about the Girls Aloud greatest hits collection – specifically the special edition*, with the extra disc of rarities. (Russell, are you reading? Have you exploded yet?) Obviously, the whole package was going to be amazing, it being the distilled, concentrated version of the 21st century’s finest band’s finest output. But it’s only when you sit down and listen to the whole thing – 13 stunning singles, and the oddest of oddities to go with them (a cover of ‘I Predict a Riot’, anyone? In this, they borrow a pound “for the bus home”… lying harlots!) – that you realise, by God, Girls Aloud are, without the slightest scintilla of doubt, the dog’s bollocks. I can’t think of a single person who shouldn’t own this album.

* Of course, that’s another thing UMG do: slap a ’special edition’ label on every album they’ve released since Pulp’s We Love Life in 2001. It’s like when DFS tell you that they’re slashing prices on their sofas, when they’ve only ever sold the bloody things at full price in one shop in Doncaster. Where they are too backward to even know what sofas are.** There are, of course, trading laws against that, but no equivalent laws to stop UMG’s ’special’ frenzy, when they don’t seem to ever release a ‘normal’ version of anything to go along with it. I wonder if some secretary, five years ago, wrote the wrong number down on a order form for these stickers (they are amazingly ubiquitous - have a peep the next time you’re in HMV) and they’re still trying to justify her accidental overspend by slamming them on everything that leaves their warehouse doors. Oh, I criticise, but Universal… I love you. Keep it up.

** I mock, but the town’s branch of Next was burnt to the ground for witchcraft.

Well, as of this morning, we still had a connection, albeit very shaky, variable (we tested it - it runs at anywhere between 150Kbps and 8Mbps!) and liable to drop at any second. They promised me it would be shut down at some point on Saturday, so I could have had their replacements working on re-establishing my service by now. But it seems that not only can TalkTalk not run a reliable connection themselves, they are incapable of pulling a plug with a day’s notice. Sigh.

Why is it that fundamental Christians can believe that their bible is the literal truth of God, to be taken at face value, exactly as it’s written (and let’s not get into the how-the-bible-was-written argument; let’s just say that “unreliable” doesn’t cover the half of it), and yet are happy to treat the Book of Revelations as an extended metaphor for whatever pet conspiracy theory they feel like nurturing (such as this) and so can be interpreted however they like?

On Monday night, I met a god. He was the best god I ever met, and he had the cutest evil little chuckle. He didn’t want much:

1. Worship Barry.
2. Sacrifice stuff to Barry.
3. No lying. Truth is holy.
4. Hunt down and destroy Barry’s compatriots: Trevor, Derek and She Who Must Not Be Named.

I loved Barry so much, I put him in my backpack and brought him with us.

Unfortunately, others in the party didn’t feel quite so well-disposed towards Barry and, in the confusion of a huge, time-warping sandstorm, I think one of them may have taken the opportunity to dispose of him.

I am told that Barry may return, but this is little comfort when faced with such betrayal.

I have a long memory, a quiet step and a sharp scimitar.

Robbie William’s Rudebox
It’s about 54 tracks long, so I’ve not quite been able to fit in a listen to the whole thing, but… There seem to be about four or five tracks that are utter dross, while the rest is fabulous, in a slightly irksome way. Its pop literacy, for want of a better phrase, is amazing but it wears its influences on its sleeve to a degree where cries of ‘rip off!’ are the only correct responses. But the sources, oh, the sources… You name it, it’s there: Gorillaz (a lot), Dead or Alive, Xenomania, even – impressively – Future Bible Heroes. When the Pet Shop Boys aren’t actively involved, Robbie’s love of them is still very evident. It is, in places, the finest stuff he’s ever done. But the dross is truly awful.

The Aloud
Talking of Xenomania, last night Jon and I listened to the demo of Girls Aloud’s Love Machine, which appears on the new Popjustice compilation album. As it’s musically identical (apart from a few new synth bits at the end) but lyrically completely different, it’s a most unnerving experience. Meanwhile, the Aloud’s new single, Something Kinda Ooooh, is just astounding. “Shoulda recognised the plan of attack when he turned and called me baby,” indeed.

Battlestar Galactica
This just gets better and better. I don’t know if I’m spoiling anything for you here, but when Battlestar Pegasus turns up… Well, by that point, I had no idea who to trust, who I liked, or even who was really real. It’s a headfuck of a programme. It goes out of its way to make it hard to like and enjoy, which only makes it all the more compelling. I plan to continue to gorge further tonight, though I’m literally afraid to watch the next episode as I’m so worried about what on earth could happen next.

It feels like I haven’t been near the internet properly for weeks, and tomorrow I’m off to a job in an office where I will be expected to get on with stuff. That said, it’s neither a taxing nor demanding job, and one where they know what I’m like – ie, I will be on the internet for the whole day, and still get every last scrap of work done and then some. However, there is a lot of internet I’ve been neglecting, so the catching up begins tomorrow morning.

Now: sleep.

OK, time to focus on lovely things.

Although I imagine I’ll feel National Novel Writing Month is anything but lovely by the end of it.

Now, I have a novel in mind (working title: The Fair Bomb), and know roughly the major turning points in the plot, so I guess I’ll have a reasonably clear idea of where I’m heading come 1st November. BUT I would like your help to ensure that I’ve a small arsenal of ideas in case I get stuck. I would like you to add a comment to this post and tell me one thing that you’d like me to work into the novel.

The Fair Bomb is basically set in modern-day England, but vast chunks of it will take place in a dying fairy-land, where things have gone horribly wrong. So, really, just about anything you care to dream up could be crowbarred in there – and the more left-field bonkersy, the better. So, add your comment, and I shall endeavour to cram the first three items, characters or situations in there. And I know there must be more than three people reading this, so I expect to hit at least that many comments! (If I get more suggestions, I shall try to fit those in, too. After all, NaNoWriMo is hardly about high art.)

So, get to it, if you don’t mind.

(Oh, and Jon, if you suggest something, you have to be prepared for me to do the same for you!)

Imagine, if you will, a place of work where the members of a department arrive on a Monday morning, sit down and settle in, check their emails and then get on with their work. Not too odd. Except, not one of them asks any of the others how their weekends were, how they are this morning, “groan, another week of this”, “did you see that on telly”… Nothing.

This is the department I am currently working in. The one I’ve grumbled so much about so far, yes, but this is the first Monday where I’ve come in here having worked the previous week. Now, I wouldn’t describe anyone here (with the exception of one former colleague) as a mate, but a little “oh, you again” acknowledgement would have been nice. No one’s said a thing other than “good morning”.

This, of course, is the latest in a line of displays of what I would describe as a bad attitude that I’ve been confronted with here. After the briefest glimmer of hope that things might be looking up (see the last two entries), things crashed abysmally on Friday afternoon. I made a boo-boo, that I will not deny, but it was a stupid, unintentional mistake and, to my mind anyway, nothing earth-shattering. Turns out they don’t think the same way. I sent an email of apology (as part of the problem was that my mistake was of a very visible kind, I thought keeping it to email and so avoiding more attention was probably the wisest move), but haven’t had any kind of acknowledgement, even less acceptance. As Friday ended, I tried to cling to the hope that the email never arrived. Now we’re 40 minutes into Monday, that hope is evaporating fast.

This morning, I woke up and had a feeling I haven’t had for years, an apprehension, a loathing of the idea of having to face my place of work. Even in the worst times at my last job, I never had the horrible sadness of that “I really can’t go in and go through it all again” weighing on me as I did this morning, and as I have in previous, seriously bad jobs. There wasn’t a single day in the last job where I thought “I can’t do it”. Today, that’s what I thought.

This morning’s lack of friendly camaraderie was, at least, not just aimed at me. They do this to each other, too. That I can cling on to.

But, even if I make it through the week without throwing a sickie (though, the way I feel this morning, I’m more likely to just be honest and tell them where to stick it), I am never returning to work here.

What a lovely way to start a week, eh?

Oh, how you’ll laugh. I think it may have been the presence of lovely Claire, breaking the ice yesterday. Or maybe just that I’ve spent enough time here to relax into it a little. Whatever, things are improving massively. A couple of the colder people here are warming to me, and I bumped into a couple of people from other departments as I walked from the station and they were very friendly and had a good old chat with me.

Maybe it is me. Maybe I’m just terminally grumpsome.